Powered knife sharpeners are known in the industry. See for example U.S. Pat. No. 5,611,726, issued Mar. 18, 1997 to Friel et. al. Such powered knife sharpeners are typically optimized for a single type of blade. For best results, however, each type of blade must be presented to the rotating side face of a grinding wheel at an angle that is suitable for the existing type of cutting edge found on the blade. The angle of presentation changes significantly depending upon the type of blade, for example a cleaver or hunting knife must be presented at a significantly greater included angle with respect to the plane of the rotating side face of a grinding wheel than a paring knife or a fillet knife. The grinding angle for larger blades represented by the cleaver and hunting knife is significantly greater than the presentation angle of a paring knife or fillet knife.
As noted above, the powered knife sharpeners known in the art have a single presentation angle for presenting a blade edge to the grinding wheel. This single presentation angle limits the versatility of the known powered knife sharpeners. There is then a need in the industry for a single powered knife sharpener that could present varying types of blades to a grinding wheel at an angle that is appropriate to each of the various types of blades.